Right Before The NRA Speech, A Pennsylvania Shooting Left 4 Dead

A
Pennsylvania state trooper that was not involved in the
shooting.Getty Images/William Thomas
Cain

Four people died Friday and several police officers were wounded
in a shooting spree in rural Pennsylvania, officials said.

The shootings, exactly a week after a massacre of 20 children and
six adults at a school in Connecticut, "happened over a large
area" near Geeseytown, in a remote part of the eastern US state,
Diane Meling, a spokeswoman for the Blair County Emergency
Management Agency, told AFP.

"Four people were shot dead. That number of four includes the
alleged shooter," she said. "There were several Pennsylvania
state troopers injured, I understand none seriously."

The emergency was over, officials said.

It came as a national debate on gun laws went into high gear,
with President Barack Obama saying he would support a new bill
seeking a ban on assault rifles.

In Newtown, Connecticut on December 14 a disturbed local man used
such a rifle to carry out his massacre, before committing
suicide.